Media Literacy

Intermediality: Teaching Critical Media Literacy challenges the practice of teaching the classics & the canon of acceptable literary works far removed from students' experiences, with emphasis on across-the-curriculum teaching of critical thinking, critical reading, & critical viewing skills. The authors, Ladislaus Semali & Ann Watts Pailliotet, present literacy education as "intermedial" in nature-it entails constructing connections among varying conceptions & sign systems. Reading printed texts requires more than simply decoding letters into words or sounds, it involves finding meaning, motive, structure, & affect. The same goes for reading the electronic text. Intermediality argues for the discourse of literacy to take up a critical stance by examining a whole wide array of texts that form the meaning-making process of the looming information age.

The contemporary young reader learns from a very early age to read and interpret through a broad range of media. Literacies Across Media explores how a group of boys and girls, aged from 10 to 14, make sense of narratives in a variety of formats, including print, electronic book, video, DVD, computer game and CD-ROM. This book records these young people over a period of eighteen months as they read, view and play different texts, demonstrating variations and consistencies of interpretative behaviour across different media. Margaret Mackey analyses how the activities of reading, viewing and playing intertwine and affect each other's development. Her in-depth research shows young readers developing strategies for interpreting narratives through encounters with a diverse range of texts and media. The study breaks new ground in its illustration and exploration of the impact of cross-media fertilization on how young readers come to an understanding of how to make sense of stories. Literacies Across Media offers both a vivid account of a group of young readers coming to terms with texts and a radical perspective on the growth of a generation of young readers. It is thought-provoking, fascinating and highly informative reading not only for theoreticians interested in the reading process, but also teachers, librarians, parents and anybody involved with young people and their texts.

This text gives prospective and practicing teachers a comprehensive understanding of how to teach multiple literacies in elementary and middle school classrooms. All of the literacies-dance, music, visual arts, popular culture, media, and computer technologies-are integrated with reading and writing. Balanced treatment is given to theoretical perspectives and practical applications. The text features authentic cases written by preservice teachers, and commentaries on the cases from practitioners and university professors. The cases are designed to prepare future teachers for the praxis teacher certifying exam and others offered in many states. Three theoretical chapters support the practical applications. The practical applications chapters (chaps. 4-12) gradually lead readers toward a deeper understanding of how to conceptualize and structure more complex, integrated lessons.

By joining bodies of research in media theory, cultural studies, and critical pedagogy, Developing Media Literacy in Cyberspace offers a vision of learning that values social empowerment over technical skills. An inquiry into the existence and range of models equipped to cultivate critical teaching and learning in the Internet-supported classroom, this new study argues that media literacy offers the best long-term training for today's youth to become experienced practitioners of 21st-century technology. Author Julie Frechette helps educators develop and provide concrete learning strategies that enable students to judge the validity and worth of what they see on the Internet as they strive to become critically autonomous in a technology-laden world.

This textbook examines how our experiences with media affect the way we acquire knowledge about the world, and how this knowledge creates consequences for attitudes and behavior. For courses in media effects, mass communication, and media psychology.